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Rocketing up the stairs – Lucia Leuci

Your latest show “My Heart’s With You” at 63rd-77th Steps – Art Project Staircase in Bari (Italy) was curated by Alex Ross who wrote a sensitive-funny conversation between “L & R” as the exhibition’s text. How did your collaboration started?

After some exchange of e-mails in order to focus the objectives of the exhibition, I sent some preparatory drawings of the work. Alex has created a fictional dialogue between “L & R”, the two female protagonists. The thing seemed so relevant that I decided to entitle the project in that way. Anyway, by those thoughts, the popular character of the local market and the humility of everyday life emerge very well.

Courtesy of Lucia Leuci. Photo Rosa Ciano

What caught first my attention were the water transfer tattoos on cutlery trays, with their pink colors. Where do these inspirations come from?

I spend a lot of time in Chinese shops and megastores, searching for characterizing objects that could describe our current situation, simply by exposing them as a work of art. My interventions are slight, the conceptual difference is minimal as the sum of the same objects that are stratified. For example, removable tattoos on cutlery trays as well as the lock of synthetic hair and all elements that humanize my pieces. These tattoos, that I applied on the two trays forming the sculptures on the wall, do not evoke the concept of tattoo as it is usually intended. Mine is not a permanent sign, but an ephemeral characterization of everyday life.

Courtesy of Lucia Leuci. Photo Rosa Ciano

How did your view and research change from the time you left your hometown? And how was relating to it for this exhibition?

Perhaps the city has changed, but the social context of Bari does not, it has never been easy. I wanted to focus on the daily life of “Libertà” area, one of the most popular and authentic expressions of this metropolis.
In big cities there are different social codes from the average. And this is even more true in the buildings of the popular side of Bari, which become small-scale social entities, with their own rhythms and rules: sometimes they differ from those with social codes, that we normally know about. This was my main purpose when I approached the capital of the region where I was born.

Courtesy of Lucia Leuci. Photo Rosa Ciano

From June 27, 2014 to August 15, 2014 you will be part of “Speedboat” exhibition at Nicelle Beauchene in New York. How will you contribute to this group show?

In the exhibition “Speedboat” at Nicelle Beauchene in New York, I will expose some artworks that I titled “Portraits”. They are transparent resin plates with objects embedded, which become descriptive clues/attributes of a particular person, and a character. For this reason, I thought about a title so clear and simple. The significance, at least, is the “play of references” that these objects produce in the viewer.

Courtesy of Lucia Leuci. Photo Rosa Ciano

Which direction are you giving to your works?

After these last projects, I will continue to analyze the life in the cities, especially that one of teen-agers. As they are the most receptive subjects of the society, in an aesthetic and anthropological sense, I will study their habits, their choices, the way they change and look, etc. In order to represent the main characteristics – such as precariousness and ephemerality, relating to the emotional status and also to the use of materials – of the society in which we live. Or – at least this is my intent.